Here is a little more detailed bit following up on my Facebook comments this morning about the Commerce Clause. Part of my life is really boring, so I read a modern day version of The Federalist Papers. (The Original Argument, Beck, 2011) In it, I learned that the Founding Fathers had some really cool ideas. They aren’t really very intuitive; you have to study this stuff, and realize how nature and people work. They discovered that in order for there to be order, man needed to be trustworthy ( or more to the point, he needed to be assumed to be trustworthy), certain natural elements exist (including man’s propensity to screw things up!), and there are certain Truths that can’t be changed, or ignored.
The Founders acknowledged Natural Law, they pointed out that rights come from our Creator, not the Feds, they discovered that liberty is a gift from God, and that with that law and gift, other things can occur. Like where the Bible says that we are to work for our keep, and we get paid for it because it has value, and if others like it they will buy it, and that creates more value, and it just grows. So, the Constitution was written to protect the natural flow of things, to keep us from mucking up the works, and set some ways that we (meaning the states) can work together for our collective common good, while still having our own states’ individual features.
The reason we are the most productive country in the world, the wealthiest, the most industrious, responsible for so much new product and ideas, is that this country was set up to foster an environment where it is practical to try stuff, and make money on the stuff that works. Reading The Federalist Papers isn’t very fun, especially the original text, but when you read a few of them on the different topics, it comes together that those dudes in the funny wigs who were always dressed up were on to something.
The Commerce Clause isn’t just a blank check that says the feds can control business and trade with foreign countries and among the states. It was written to keep each state from adding a tax to a product that traveled through it on its way to the market, and to gather the collective buying power of all 13 or 22 or 50 (not 57) states to deal with other countries, instead of each state having to deal with them on their own. (In the same fashion, the military was set up on a federal level so each state didn’t have to have a navy and army. Much better to combine ranks for that. We have a federal government, NOT a national one)
The Commerce Clause makes it so that a broom made in Florida and shipped to Ohio, or vise versa, doesn’t get tagged with a tax when it travels through Georgia and Tennessee on its way; or worse, can’t get to Ohio because Georgia won’t let it pass.
So, we need to first of all, know why things are the way they are, and what they mean (and don’t mean), and then, we need to speak up when some goon in DC says he can do this or that because of the ______ clause/amendment/section. Mostly the Constitution says what the Feds can and can’t do, and then leaves the rest to the states. And if ya don’t like how your state does something, fix it, deal with it, or move to another state that does it the way you like. Our politicians have become so uninformed, or politically correct, or are rigging the system, so that nothing is as it should be, and our liberty, religious freedoms, and peace are almost gone. So healthcare can’t be regulated by the Commerce Clause, cuz that’s not how it was written.
Ok. I’m done for now.
